LOUISVILLE – The kind of stories that are written on this racetrack on the first Saturday in May are the kind you couldn’t dream up in your wildest imagination, and if you did, you would probably be too embarrassed to share them with anyone.

Well, allow me to share the story of the 125th Kentucky Derby, in which the unlikeliest combination – a fat horse and a fat jockey – added up not to a fat chance, but a fat payoff for bettors foolish enough to gamble on an animal named Charismatic and a rider named Chris Antley.

In February, the horse ran in a claimer – and lost. The jockey was running on the dusty streets of Columbia, S.C.

He lost, too. Weight, that is.

And yesterday, they came together to steal a race that nobody, and I mean not even D. Wayne (Hall of Fame) Lukas himself, thought they could win.

In fact, three months ago you could have gotten a price betting that neither the horse nor the rider would make it here at all.

As he did several times in the post-race interview, an emotional Antley had to pause to compose himself.

He had accomplished a lot, dating from when he was the hottest bug boy in New York since Steve Cauthen, to the day in 1987 when he rode nine winners in one card to his winning ride on Strike the Gold in the 1991 Derby.

Along the way, Chris Antley had a rougher trip than he gave Charismatic yesterday, even in a 19-horse derby field.

There were cocaine problems, a drug suspension, and finally, over the past five years, a worsening weight problem that blew his 5-3 body up to 147 pounds.

For 18 months, he did not ride a horse, could not ride a horse, because when a jockey cannot get his weight below 125 pounds, he is about as useful as a three-legged thoroughbred.

So, for the better part of the last year, Chris Antley, 33 years old, moved back into the family home in Columbia, S.C., with his father, Les, to train his way back into racing.

“It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life,” Antley said. “When you’ve tried every diet there is, and running, running, running doesn’t work, you’re at your wit’s end. But I had a goal and I told myself, I’ll die trying to get there.”

He ran 25 miles a week, every week. He ran so much that the people along his daily route took to calling him Forrest Gump. He ran so much that around Thanksgiving, one of his knees gave out and he couldn’t run again until after Christmas.

In a way, he had something in common with his horse, which had performed so poorly as a two-year-old that Lukas dropped him into a $62,500 claimer at Santa Anita in February.

Lukas called it “a confidence-builder,” but it couldn’t have done much good, because the horse finished second.

In truth, Lukas and the owners, Bob and Beverly Lewis, were looking to cut their losses on a $200,000 animal that seemed to be headed nowhere but the feeding trough.

“I would drill him and drill him and drill him,” Lukas said, “And he just seemed to be getting fatter.”

“We had huge feed bills, and things didn’t seem to be working out with him,” Bob Lewis said. “Sometimes in this business, you have to stop the bleeding.”

Incredibly, both Charismatic and Antley seemed to turn the corner around the same time. The horse ran a strong second in the El Camino Real in March, just around the time Antley, finally down to 114 pounds, was starting to ride again.

On April 17, Antley rode for Lukas at Santa Anita the day before Lukas planned to start Charismatic, under Jerry Bailey, in the Lexington Handicap at Keeneland.

“Wayne came up to me, real serious, and said, ‘I want you to watch the Lexington real closely tomorrow,'” Antley said. “I got a colt of mine stepping up to the race and I want you to take a look at him.'”

Yesterday, the fat horse and the fat jockey combined to win the slowest Derby in 10 years, but make no mistake, Charismatic’s victory was all about the trip, not at all about the time.

He may not have been the best horse in the race, but he certainly got the best ride.

Faced with the choice of saving ground or saving trouble, Antley chose to take the long road to glory.

In fact, the three top finishers – Charismatic, Menifee and Cat Thief, Lukas’ other entrant and the one he expected to be in contention – all stayed wide through the first turn, where the rest of the field encountered the kind of thrills usually only experienced in the Coney Island bumper-car arcade.

“This was the worst race to ride in that I can recall,” said Robbie Davis, who finished 12th on Ecton Park. “I was expecting someone to fall, but they were jammed in so tight there was no room to fall.”

“I almost got dropped out there,” said Corey Nakatani, who wound up 13th on Desert Hero. “My horse came back with cuts all over his legs.”

“This was my worst trip in horse racing,” said Gary Stevens, who beat only eight horses with the co-favorite, General Challenge, Bob Baffert’s “superhorse.”

But somehow, Antley and Charismatic came through the pack unimpeded and found themselves moving toward the lead as first Valhol, then Cat Thief and finally, Worldly Manner, the mystery horse from Dubai, took the lead but could not hold it.

In the final 70 yards, Antley needed to whack Charismatic twice with the whip to hold off the rallying Menifee, who almost made it home under an inside-out ride by Pat Day.

But Antley, urging his horse with his hands and his heart, held off the challenge. He even had time to raise a forefinger in victory three jumps before the wire.

“This has more sentimental value than anything I’ve ever done in my life,” Antley said. “I’ve been very lucky and I’ve had a lot of things handed to me in my life, but this time, I had to find the depths of myself to be able to get back. Believe me, it took a lot of hard work just to get here.”